Ebola outbreak in Central Africa, officials scramble to control virus' spread

In this 2014 photo provided by the Samaritan's Purse aid organization, Dr. Kent Brantly, left, treats an Ebola patient at the Samaritan's Purse Ebola Case Management Center in Monrovia, Liberia.  (AP Photo/Samaritan's Purse)

Global health officials are monitoring a possible resurgence of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo amid reports of an outbreak of the feared contagion near the country’s northern border.

Public health officials in the DRC have reported at least 43 cases of suspected Ebola and four deaths. While only two of the cases have been positively confirmed in a laboratory to be Ebola, experts at the World Health Organization and the United States’ Center for Disease Control and Prevention are closely monitoring the situation and teams are already in the isolated region in an attempt to contain the outbreak.

‘‘The Likati health district is in a remote area, but contact tracing is essential to contain the outbreak in its focus; the DRC can rely on very experienced health workers for this purpose,” Yokouidé Allarangar, WHO representative in the DRC, said in a statement earlier this month.

The DRC may have past experience dealing with Ebola outbreaks, but experts contend that the remoteness of the outbreaks’ hot zone – the northeastern Bas-Uélé province – and the country’s ongoing civil conflict make efforts to contain the virus’ spread difficult.This is the eighth epidemic of Ebola in the DRC since the discovery of the virus in 1976 and comes just three years after an outbreak in West Africa killed over 11,000 people and created a global panic. It is still unclear how Ebola outbreaks begin, but researchers theorize that it could come from people eating infected pieces of “bush meat” – the meat of primates and other wild animals sold in local markets – or from bats carrying the carrying the virus.

“The logistics are difficult,” Jesse Goodman, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship, told Fox News. “It’s a real challenge, but they have identified the area and are tracking a large number of contacts.”

The area – located over 300 miles from the DRC capital of Kinshasa - has very few passable roads and bridges open during this time of the year, so helicopters are required to bring teams and equipment to the town of Likati, where motorcycles take over. Health workers have already built two mobile labs, but a generator in one failed and had to be replaced.